Thursday, February 12, 2009

Think, think, think

I modified the pattern to a scarf (CO 40sts, measures maybe 6-8" across), and was planning on trying out the knitted on edging technique using the border chart provided in the book.

(by the way, the first 6" of the scarf in the photo has been blocked, though not very thoroughly)

As I was knitting I had a slight panic attack because I wasn't sure I'd have enough yarn to knit the actual scarf and then the lace edging. So, I knit a repeat of the edging, calculated how many repeats I'd need to go around the edge of the scarf and wound off the required yardage from the ball of yarn. Problem solved.

But now, I sort of ran into another problem. The edging used in the pattern is meant for a stole-sized (maybe 15"-20" wide) piece, not a thinner (8"-10" wide) scarf. When I knit the sample I realized that it looked a little large, but I ignored it and went ahead anyway. However, last night I reknit the edging (separate from the scarf) with a few more repeats and was not really happy with at all. It's just too large for the scarf.

The border chart featured double yarn overs, so at first I modified the chart to exclude those, worked pretty well (though I ran into some annoying math issues) but still too large, and I realized I just wasn't that fond of the pattern at all. The large triangles just didn't seem to complement the scarf.

So now, what to do?

Should I knit on until the scarf is a decent length, figure out something for each short end (I cast on with a provisional cast so I'm sort of committed to edging the short ends at least) and block?

Or should I go ahead and knit the edging and hope it looks better when it's actually knit on the scarf? (Sorry about the lack of photos, it was late when I knit the edging and I sort of frogged it before I remembered that I could bring the problem to the blog and you all might appreciate photos. Do check on Ravelry though, a lot of the projects show the edging quite well)

Third option, find a better edging pattern and try that?

It seems as though the edging should be wider and shorter, since the triangles just seem so tall for a thin scarf.

Any alternate border suggestions would be really helpful, I searched around Ravelry, but I couldn't seem to find anything suitable.